because that ilvl of 700 was never actually launched. They would have to keep at least two "progression gear paths". Also, which one willl take? What Normal raid ilvl would be? What LFR would be, What heroic would be?

They would probably have to tweak every single spell in the game. Because if they squish the ilvls, they will also reduce the amount of healing and damage skill do, but they would have to increase that and re scale it wo what those abilities would do in the squish never happened.

There are many decisions ans tweaking to be done in every single patch they launch.

That's a ton of resources that need to be used in every patch just to try to keep old content as soloable as today, which will never be accurate and will bring tons of bugs and exploits.

---------- Post added 2013-02-06 at 11:20 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Ellixen

Why is it so hard to imagine that they just lower numbers across the board say 50%, or even 75%, one by lowering EVERYTHING based off of a percentage, it's exactly the same, we just see less numbers.

And yes we'd still be able to roflstomp solo kara (because you're a hardcore if you do) because all raids and dungeons would also be lowered by the same percentage hence the "EVERYTHING" i put in

What you are saying is not hard to imagine.

It is not what Blizzard said they would do however.

You should read Blizzard's proposition, which is to change the exponential scaling into linear (except for the last expansion) which does mean you will have less power relative to old content.

So please, before giving your opinion on the subject, read about it.

In Blizzard proposal, NOTHING would be touched up untill lvl 60. Up from that point, growth would change from exponential growth to linear, except in the last expansion that will be exponential. Then, when a new expansion is launched, the previouse xpansion would be squished and only the laste xpansion would keep the exponential growth.

because that ilvl of 700 was never actually launched. They would have to keep at least two "progression gear paths". Also, which one willl take? What Normal raid ilvl would be? What LFR would be, What heroic would be?

They would probably have to tweak every single spell in the game. Because if they squish the ilvls, they will also reduce the amount of healing and damage skill do, but they would have to increase that and re scale it wo what those abilities would do in the squish never happened.

There are many decisions ans tweaking to be done in every single patch they launch.

That's a ton of resources that need to be used in every patch just to try to keep old content as soloable as today, which will never be accurate and will bring tons of bugs and exploits.

So why not just add a buff that multiplies your damage, healing and health by, say, 10 or 25 in old content? Who cares about keeping it balanced, it's old content that's trivial right now anyway, otherwise you couldn't solo it and the whole debate stops having meaning.

So why not just add a buff that multiplies your damage, healing and health by, say, 10 or 25 in old content? Who cares about keeping it balanced, it's old content that's trivial right now anyway, otherwise you couldn't solo it and the whole debate stops having meaning.

Because the difference woulnt be flat.

You will be a lot less powerful relative to Molten Core, you will be less powerful relative to Karazhan, but not as much less powerful than to Molten Core. You will be less powerful relative to Ulduar, but not as much as Karazhan, etc, etc.

This is what people dont understand, the item squish is not a flat reduction os stats, its a complete revamp changing an exponential growth into a linear one, completely disrupting all the power differences between every single level.

Yes, using a lot of resources they could come up with a buggy and exploitable way to put buffs/changes to solo old content to get it roughly at the same level than now, but it requiers A LOT of resources put into that, and it would have to be done with EVERY SINGLE EXPANSION from now on (because they said they want to keep the exponential growth ONLY in the last expansion).

Such a HUGE change, WILL introduce at least dozens of bugs/exploits, and will mean they will develop less content.

All this, so that people dont have to look at big numbers.

---------- Post added 2013-02-06 at 11:34 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Grogo

Look, having gear with 1243 strength on it....doing millions of damage....it looks and feels unrealistic to me. It lost it's appeal this expansion. The numbers are just stupid now and I hate it.

Throwing a fireball is realistic, but 1243 strenght isnt?

100 strenght is more realistic that 1243? How? How in reality can you have 100 strenght?

Why would 1243 be more or less stupid than 123? They are both numbers....

"Or maybe it’s better just to pull the Band-Aid off fast and fix everything at once. Time will tell. I did, however, want to outline the problem lest any of you believe we don’t think there is a problem. There is. We’re just not sure of the best solution yet."

If blizzard themselves are saying it is a problem then I would think they know more about it internally than people posting in this thread. This to me means that something will be done. Perhaps something that hasn't been mentioned yet.

To those saying about it requiring too much resources.. The system has been implemented already for internal testing, the only reason it wasn't used was because it "didn't feel right".

Damn I was looking forward to the expansion where the numbers were so huge they didn't even fit in my screen, when numbers were so huge, they didn't fit any of the variable types in C++ (or whatever language WoW is programmed with), thus causing the game to crash, the computer to explode and my desk to catch fire.

Off Topic: man this made me lol. Thanks man, you made my morning.

On Topic: Yea I wouldn't mind really either way. But I love seeing the big numbers.

If they were to do an item squish how do you feel about a level squish as well. For instance: Vanilla WoW 1-50, TBC 51-55, WotLK 56-60, Cata 61-65, MoP 66-70.

Just a thought

For all I care we could be level 5 (Vanilla = 1, BC = 2, Wrath = 3, Cata = 4, MoP = 5). Our level makes no difference when it comes to gear scaling. The main part of each expansion happens at max level. It's how we gain power at each of those levels in between that counts.

"This is my story,
It'll go the way I want,
Or I'll end it here!" - Tidus (FFX)

Numbers add to the crappyness of a game all about numbers? Every swing you take, whether it's chance to hit, what it hits for, what any DoTs it applies tick for and how fast they tick... All about numbers. If numbers bother you, this is not the game for you.

I'm yet to see one good valid reason for an item squish. Most of it is rubbish along the lines of "you idiots are just obsessed with big numbers", coming from people who apparently fear big numbers...

Firstly, i stopped playing this game after DS came out (i jsut hang out oin the forums cause of habit) cause of how shit it was, havent bought mop cause it introduced only crap ive seen elsewhere and has nothing creative or innovative aobut it, not mentioning that it butchers the lore of whole warcraft universe. So those reasons dont really include anything "numbers related"
What i mean about numbers adding crappyness to the game is that they are simply too big and too inconsistent.
Imagine a player, starting their game, getting their first +1str/+1sta item, then getting into the city and seeing a guy whos 1 item gives over 5k stats total... Such player cannot do anything beside stop and think how the fuck scaling is done if you go from 2 to 5k stats in 90 lvls.
Then anyway, that player goes back to lvling, gets to outland, all nice and dandy, there is fluid progression of items, then he reaches northrend and suddenly he is provided with a situation where every item he aquired so far is completly useless... same goes with every next expansion, only that the feeling is worse with every single one of them.
As a plus to all of this, with every expansion you get chain of quests that provide you with "starting" green items... to the level where it gets repetitve and guess what... boring.
So yeah, big numbers, or rather their inconsisten growth is screwing the experience up.

As for the squish itself, whatever blizz would decide to do, its gonna suck for one of the sides anyway so there isnt a good way out of this.. wow is simply paying for mistakes of his lead designer. I think so far it payed with what? 3? 4? mil subscribers?

Didn't read through all 14 pages, but since I rarely see this argument in these threads I'm going to assume it hasn't come up yet.

The biggest problem that the current ilvl increase will cause is Drama.

Every time you increase your gear ilvl by 13 (or 6 or 1) at max level, the numbers increase is greater in a non-linear fashion. What I mean by this is (for example):
ilvl 450: 30k dps
ilvl 463: 40k dps
ilvl 476: 55k dps
ilvl 489: 80k dps

DPS growth outpaces ilvl growth. At this point, the fact that there are many slots mitigates an individual percentage gain based on one drop.
But that won't last.
At some point, an ilvl increase of 13 for just the mainhand weapon will increase your dps by 10%. Or 25%.

What do you think happens to raiding guilds when that weapon drops?

Drama. Guilds will fall apart.

Not only that: right now people can argue successfully that "you don't need to do dailies". But once every small upgrade can provide a greater than 3% increase in your dps? Raiders of all stripes will be required to upgrade gear any way they can. Look at the reaction to the rep-gated VP gear. Multiply that by a thousand and that barely scratches the surface.

Item squish ultimately isn't about low numbers vs big numbers.

It's about keeping guilds from falling apart and people from ragequitting.

(Sidenote: And it's not just the ilvl of the gear that's increasing too fast. Enchants and gems are growing at a ridiculous rate as well. There's a reason GC asked seriously if people would be ok with getting rid of them because he recognizes it's part of the problem.)

You're not allowed to discuss conspiracy theories on mmo-champion, which makes me wonder what they're trying to hide.

Yes, changing Int to Int64 is a very easy change that can be done overnight and will only require you to download a path, it will not mean weeks of servers down. It can be easily done in a typical maintanance day.

Yeah, and who cares about allocating 4 bytes more memory for every friggin' Int variable that gets changed. Piece of cake! Screw efficient programming, am I right?

Yeah, and who cares about allocating 4 bytes more memory for every friggin' Int variable that gets changed. Piece of cake! Screw efficient programming, am I right?

And how many variables do you think that would change?Only players and NPCs HP. How much would they add to the server? Let's say there are 500000 (me being generous) mobs spawned in the world + 6000 players.

That'd be an extra 15mb to the server.

If you honestly think that an extra 15mb in the server is a lot then I'm pretty sure you have more things to be worried not only that.